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When Amy Lee retired from a four-decade-long career in law and finance in 2020, she felt it might be a chance to relax. Instead, she found herself getting antsy.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor my whole life, I thought I would enjoy retirement,\u201d she tells Fortune at her home in central Singapore. \u201cTo my horror, I developed insomnia because there was no structure in my life.\u201d Her boredom sent her in an interesting direction: When Singapore lifted its COVID movement restrictions in 2022, Lee recalls she put on a face mask \u201cand sat through an eight-hour course on blockchain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee, who is also the niece of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore\u2019s first prime minister, now chairs the global advisory board of the Singapore Gulf Bank, a fully licensed, Bahrain-based digital bank which offers investors access to both traditional and digital assets. The bank comes from a partnership between the Whampoa Group, a multi-family office Lee had co-founded, and Mumtalakat, Bahrain\u2019s sovereign wealth fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SGB hopes to tap increasing trade between the Gulf and Asia, which hit $516 billion in 2024, according to a November 2025 analysis from Asia House, a think tank. The Middle East\u2019s trade with Asia is now larger than its trade with the West.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder this geopolitical climate, the Asia-Middle East corridor is growing in significance and importance,\u201d Lee explains. \u201cTrade and weapon flows are increasing between the two regions, especially with the U.S.-China bifurcation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SGB is also betting on digital assets, branding itself as \u201cthe world\u2019s first fully integrated bank\u201d where users can make transactions around the clock in both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies. In 2025, it recorded over $4 billion in deposits and $12 billion in transaction value.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf commerce is 24\/7, banking shouldn\u2019t be limited,\u201d Lee says. \u201cIncreasingly, family offices, individuals, corporations and even governments are starting to take on digital currency\u2014so how relevant are you going to be if you don\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n
Why Bahrain?<\/p>\n
Though the team had considered several locations, they eventually established the SGB in 2024 in Bahrain, a tiny Middle Eastern nation just 300 square miles large, approximately the size of New York City. \u201cBahrain is very small: small population, small island,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThey were the first country in the Arabian Gulf to discover oil, so they ran low on resources and recalibrated their economy, with finance recently overtaking natural resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee and her team visited Bahrain in 2023 to meet with the crown prince and prime minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, finance minister Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, and the then-governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain, Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj. Though it was her first visit to the Gulf nation, Lee said Bahrain reminded her of Singapore. \u201cThe mindset felt very familiar,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe first thing Rasheed did when he sat down was to read us the Riot Act. We also have riot acts in Singapore, and we\u2019re comfortable with rules,\u201d she said. \u201cSet up the boundaries and we will move with great confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SGB team was also drawn to Bahrain\u2019s progressive, crypto-friendly policies, and its comprehensive national roadmap to embracing digital assets. The country also holds the crypto industry to high standards, with several regulatory bodies\u2014including the Central Bank of Bahrain, Financial Intelligence Directorate and Ministry of Industry and Commerce\u2014involved in enforcing rules governing digital assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to look for a jurisdiction that is progressive, yet mature,\u201d Lee explained. \u201cThe crypto industry is moving towards greater regulation and compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since its inception, the SGB has inked numerous partnerships with both traditional giants like JP Morgan and Standard Chartered, and newer decentralized financial firms like Binance and Solana.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, the name of the game is still your correspondent record,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe are a start-up, so when the big boys look at you, it is a huge compliment to the team.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In February, the SGB also introduced a stablecoin layer to its real-time settlement platform, SGB Net, which allows clients to mint, convert, hold and trade stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are digital currencies pegged to the U.S. dollar.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur ambition is to become the one bank for all of finance,\u201d Shawn Chan, the SGB\u2019s CEO, said in a Feb 2 press release. \u201cStablecoins have become the working capital of the digital asset economy, yet managing them remains unnecessarily complex.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Never say die\u2018<\/p>\n
Lee is part of Singapore\u2019s leading political family. Her uncle, Lee Kuan Yew, was Singapore\u2019s first prime minister, credited with setting down an approach to economic development that helped make the city-state one of Asia\u2019s richest and most developed societies. Her cousin, Lee Hsien Loong, was Singapore\u2019s third prime minister, who led the city for two decades and stepped down in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Growing up, Lee was sent to a Chinese school for her first ten years of schooling, taking GCE \u2018O\u2019 Levels subjects including physics, chemistry and mathematics. She then pivoted to attend Raffles Institution, one of Singapore\u2019s top English schools, at age 17, before going on to read law at the National University of Singapore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can imagine, it was a bit of a struggle, since all of a sudden I had to read all my subjects in a different language,\u201d Lee said. \u201cAnd when I went to law school, they even decided Latin was still relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduating in 1982, she began her career as a lawyer at Lee & Lee, a law firm founded by her father, Lee Kim Yew; uncle, Lee Kuan Yew; and his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, in 1955. In 2011, she started Whampoa Group alongside Lee Han Shih, a member of the Singaporean business family behind OCBC bank, the city-state\u2019s second largest bank by assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Intrigued by the potential of cryptocurrency to reshape the financial secto, Lee launched Whampoa Digital, the group\u2019s technology and Web3 investment arm, in 2021. Whampoa Digital then joined a consortium led by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, which applied for but didn\u2019t receive a digital bank license in Singapore, forcing the group to turn to other jurisdictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite operating outside of Singapore, Lee and her team opted to retain the city-state in its name. \u201cWe\u2019re not licensed in Singapore, so we do not market in the country, but we are very proud of the Singapore brand, which I like to think represents integrity and trustworthiness,\u201d she explained. \u201cAlso, our original founding team members are all entrepreneurial Singaporeans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee credits her matriarchal Hakka and Peranakan roots, and her grandmother, Chua Jim Neo, who had raised a daughter and four boys (the eldest of whom was Lee Kuan Yew) in pre-war Singapore, as the biggest reasons for her unflinching, \u201cnever say die\u201d attitude.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandmother never spoke about female liberation,\u201d Lee said. \u201cShe just looked at me and said, \u201cGirl, anything a boy can do, you can do\u201d\u2014and she repeated that every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Amy #Lee #niece #Singapores #prime #minister #helped #launch #cryptofriendly #bank<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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